Rock Me Shake Me Field Recordings, Vol. 15: Mississippi is made up of field recordings of black musicians recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library Of Congress Folk Archives back in the early 1940s in Coahoma County, Mississippi. Most of the tracks here are unaccompanied spirituals, highlighted by Roxie Threadgill's moving "I'm Goin Lean on the Lord," but there also several brief interviews and spoken pieces, including one called "Hitler Toast" (the toaster is not named), which details what Americans are going to do to various parts of Hitler's anatomy when they find him. The strength of this collection, though, comes at the end, with six tracks by the blind fiddle player Sidney Hemphill, a veteran of the Mississippi fife and drum string band tradition. Hemphill's "The Roguish Man" is divided into two parts here, actually three, since the cut called "Strayhorn Mob" is still the same song, and all three parts are actually the ultimate shaggy dog story generally known as "Arkansas Traveler." With hundreds of floating verse elements to choose from, Hemphill was able to expand or contract the song to suit his performance needs, and the longer versions form a hilarious and surreal comic epic that would make Bob Dylan proud, although Dylan never recorded anything so wild, exuberant, and other-worldly as this. ~ Steve Leggett